


Modern Constellations

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Exchange, Demisexual Neil Josten, First Meetings, Healing, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Service Dogs, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24487927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Neil's life has been one catastrophe after another.  With the help of his service dog Fern and the calming routine of looking at the stars, he is slowly starting to trip down the road towards healing.  But then he finds a stranger in his new stargazing spot, and suddenly that road isn't so lonely.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 51
Kudos: 592
Collections: AFTG Exchange Spring 2020





	Modern Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for @owlface28 for the AFTG Spring Exchange. You asked for first meetings, looking at the stars, and fluff, prompts which I was beyond excited about. I think I managed the first two; this isn't exactly fluff, but it is hopeful, so I hope that is close enough!
> 
> Thank you as always to @tntwme for the beta, and to @foxsoulcourt and @gluupor for your encouragement and kind words, I'd be lost without y'all!
> 
> Edited to add: I was fortunate enough to be able to commission llstarcasterll for [this](https://twitter.com/llstarcasterll/status/1295413383387373573?s=20) amazing art piece for this fic!

The headlights bounced off the trees as Neil negotiated the winding road, each trunk standing out stark and brilliant for a split second before disappearing into the night. He passed the turnoff for the campground and followed the twists and turns higher up the mountainside. Fern was sprawled across the backseat, dreaming the dreams that only good dogs knew. Neil took a deep breath and tried to tamp down the little ember of impatience that burned in his chest.

It wasn’t like this place was going anywhere.

The first sign came for the observation field, and Neil slowed, easing into the little dirt lot that preceded the main paved event. There was a car already there; Neil parked at the opposite end, and Fern’s tags jingled as she bolted upright, a doggy grin spreading across her face.

“Hang on,” Neil said, shrugging into his coat. “We have to get dressed.”

He tugged on a hat and jammed his hands into gloves, then grabbed her service harness off the passenger seat. When he opened the back door, she shoved her head through the harness opening before he could even hold it out. “Impatient,” he told her. She wagged her agreement.

The harness didn’t want to clip; he fumbled with it for a moment before giving up and yanking his right glove off with his teeth. Fern snatched it out of his mouth when he bent to buckle her in, and he gave an ostentatious sigh, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Finally he managed to get the clip done, and he held out his hand for the glove. She dropped it into his palm, he slipped on her leash, and they were off.

There were voices coming from the direction of the observation field, nothing distinct, just the audible proof of existence that people always seemed compelled to provide. Fern grabbed her leash and led him into the woods in the opposite direction.

They knew the way. It had only been a couple of weeks since they found this spot, a clearing maybe half a mile from the main observation field, but they had come almost every day since. Neil didn’t even break out his flashlight. Tonight, the moon was bright enough to light the path, turning fallen leaves and the needles on the trees into quicksilver.

As they neared the little hidden clearing, Fern went on alert for a moment, ears held as high as she could manage, tail slowing its habitual motion as she sniffed the air. Neil felt a tiny little jolt, the familiar acid crawling up his throat; his dog sensed it too, relaxing her posture as she came to press against his leg. He reached down to tickle her ears, their velvet softness soothing and familiar underneath his fingers. _One two three four. One two three four._

She nuzzled his palm, and he steeled himself and walked the last dozen yards to the clearing.

For the first time, it wasn’t empty. A figure crouched behind the outline of a telescope, their back to Neil and Fern. Neil froze, the brief spike of fear quickly turning into irritation. This was his spot, he had found it, he and Fern, and here was this person taking up the best part with his stupid telescope, as if the sky wasn’t beautiful enough as it was. He straightened up, lifted his chin. He would just march over—

Fern sneezed. Neil did not flinch, no matter what it might have seemed. The person with the telescope whipped around, one hand going to their opposite sleeve as if on instinct. Neil reflexively raised his hands, and the person slowly returned their hand to their side.

They stared at each other in silence for a while, the only movement Fern’s tail thumping gently against Neil’s leg. The person was short, possibly even shorter than Neil; everything about them was square, square jaw, square shoulders, square hands. Their face was half in shadow, but the one eye Neil could easily see was calm, assessing. After an endless moment, they turned back to their telescope, and Neil didn’t know why it amused him to be so summarily dismissed.

Neil settled onto the ground, Fern laying behind him, content to be a pillow. The sky opened up above them, an enormous swirl of purple and blue and pink through the black, dotted by thousands of stars. He could count them all night and not number them all, and that little thing in his chest, that thing that twisted and danced like a fish on a line, slowly went quiet.

He lay there, staring up at the vastness of the universe above, until the dampness from the ground had bled through his pants, until peace had stolen through him with the chill, and then he got to his feet and left without a glance at the person still peering steadfast through their telescope.

* * *

Winter was toying with the world, letting it think it had escaped into the green spaces of spring before reaching out and grasping it again in a frosty hand. The week had been full of pale sunshine and soft showers that barely counted as rain, lulling some emboldened plants into poking wary leaves through the soil. But tonight, the grass was silvered with frost, save where Fern’s feet cut a dark path.

Neil had come prepared, an old blanket slung over his shoulder, layers underneath his parka. The air had the sharp clean smell of impending snow, but the sky was unobscured when he settled onto the blanket, Fern tucked into his side.

The stars seemed more distant tonight. It was as if even they were shying away from the cold, but it seemed to make the colors all the richer. He didn’t know the science of it. What streaked the sky with pink and purple and green and blue? And why did it all hide in inky black when confronted with the lights of humanity?

Fern sat up and barked, startling him out of his thoughts. He was on his feet before he consciously decided to move, braced to run, the leash in his hand the only tether to his current reality. She barked again, her alert bark that she used when people came to the door. His heart was racing, and she pressed her body to his leg, glancing up at him with a tentative wag.

The person from the week before emerged from the woods, a large bag slung over their shoulders. “I’m allowed to be here,” they said, in a deep, flat voice. “It’s a public park.”

“No shit,” Neil bristled, one hand going automatically to Fern’s head.

“I was talking to the dog.” There was an undercurrent Neil thought might have been amusement to the man’s voice, but his movements were slow as he set his bag on the ground and he kept an eye on Fern as he went.

“She’s allowed to be here too, she’s a service dog.”

The man hummed. “I would never have guessed. If only she was wearing a vest with Service Dog in large reflective letters on it.”

Neil laughed in spite of himself, brushing a finger over the words on Fern’s harness. “They gave me shit about having her, up at the observation field.”

“That’s illegal discrimination,” the man said, not pausing as he assembled his telescope.

“Yep.”

He didn’t feel like explaining. It was exhausting, always having to fight. Not that he didn’t; not that he hadn’t, time and time again. But he didn’t come here to fight, he came to look at the stars and lose himself in something so much bigger than the banal cruelty of the world.

The man didn’t ask. The wind sang through the pines, and the stars danced their slow celestial waltz overhead, and Neil let himself drift on the ocean of a beauty that overwhelmed any attempt to define it.

* * *

Snow coated the hills in white, and Fern had a glorious day bounding through it, catching snowflakes as they fell. Then the rain swept in, chasing it away, leaving the trees dripping and the ground slick with leaves and mud.

Neil didn’t even try to go to the clearing. There was no point, when the sky hung low enough that he thought if he reached up he might be able to touch the pearly gray clouds. He took Fern for runs during the gaps in the rain, returning with legs soaked through and the gnawing, restless monster in his chest temporarily quieted.

It came back each night. Not roaring and savage, but creeping through the shadows of his mind, the low murmurs and razor-sharp teeth of memories. Sleep was elusive. Nightmares threatened like thunder, and he couldn’t bring himself to surrender to the storm. Again and again, Fern calmed him, blanketing his body with her warmth, nuzzling his ears, the sensation so unlike anything else that it would bring him back to present, gasping and sweating with stinging eyes and bitten lips.

Finally, a clear night. Fern bounded out of the car, chasing the red light Neil’s flashlight threw with joyous abandon. Neil settled onto the old blanket while Fern sniff-inspected the little clearing, a story told in a scent language Neil could never know. And then he let himself throw his head back and just—look.

The half-moon hung low over the paintbrush treetops; a footlight to the cast of stars that took the stage overhead. The monster in his mind faded before the glory of it, dissipating into smoke. It would come back, he knew; these types of creatures couldn’t be killed; but he took a deep breath and appreciated the way his lungs were suddenly able to expand to fill his chest.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when Fern alert-barked, nor when he heard the footsteps in the dampened leaves. He didn’t bother to check to confirm it was Telescope Guy; Fern’s tail, beating against his ribs, confirmed that.

The footsteps stopped near his head, and a square face obscured part of the sky. “You’re asking to get murdered,” the man said.

Neil fought back a smile. “Do you mind? You’re blocking half the galaxy.”

There was a tiny noise, a puff of air, like the ghost of a laugh that wanted to be corporeal. “Local cryptid found murdered in state park. News at eleven.”

Neil did smile then, a little thing that avalanched into a laugh. The man turned away, unzipping his bag as he moved.

“Stay, Fern,” Neil said, when she twitched as if to follow.

The man paused in his assembly. “Charlotte’s Web?”

“Yeah,” Neil said, feeling heat rise in his face. Hardly anybody ever guessed right; those who did seemed to treat it with a condescending sort of amusement. But the man just nodded and resumed working, his hands deft and swift as he attached the telescope to the tripod. It looked like an ungainly three-legged spider when he was finished, and Neil let himself imagine it scuttling across the field like a creature in some horror movie.

He lay back onto his blanket, the remnant of his smile still on his lips, his fingers automatically finding Fern’s favorite scritchy spot. The air filled with the call of some sort of an animal—insect? bird? Neil wasn’t sure. But he thought for a moment that he could fall asleep here and dream only dreams of lights and colors, of flying that felt like falling.

* * *

“Why am I a cryptid?” Neil asked. Days had passed where the clearing was empty save for the stars and the mysterious, invisible singers. But tonight there had been an extra car in the parking lot, and he hadn’t been surprised when Fern’s tail had gone into overdrive as they approached their spot.

The man didn’t even pull away from his scope. “You appeared out of nowhere but suddenly you’re always here, lying on the ground when it’s fucking freezing, staring up at the sky like it holds all of life’s answers. Do you even exist when I’m not here?”

Neil huffed at the stars. The question was both amusing and unsettling; how do you prove your existence, outside of the moment in which you are breathing? “What about Fern?” She gave a questioning wag at her name. “Is she a cryptid too?”

“She’s your cover. You probably think only a human would have a yellow Lab.”

Neil let go of the leash. “Fern, attack.”

Fern cocked her head at the unfamiliar term, then realized she was free, dropped into a play bow, and zoomed around the clearing in loose figure-eights. Telescope Guy watched her go, then turned to Neil. “Intimidating.”

His tone was as flat as a board, and a laugh bubbled out of Neil. Fern took that as encouragement, and she bounded over, vaulting Neil before spinning to kiss him on the lips. He spluttered, wiping the drool off his mouth while she backed up, a doggy grin splitting her face.

“Don’t you ever just look, though?” Neil asked, gesturing at the telescope. “Without that?”

There was a long stretch where the only noise was the music of the invisible singers, and Neil wished there was a moon so he could see whatever was crossing Telescope Guy’s face. Then, with a squaring of his shoulders that looked like the breath before a fight, he walked over to the edge of Neil’s ratty blanket.

He stood there, waiting; after a second it registered, and Neil scooted over, leaving a stretch of blanket free. The man sat, careful not to get too close to Neil, and leaned back on his hands to look up at the sky. Neil wondered why so cautious, but that wasn’t his problem to solve. Fern wormed her way in between them, and he huffed a laugh as he buried his hand in the thick fur around her neck. Taking a deep breath, he turned his eyes back up to the sky.

He wondered what the man saw. If it was in some way diminished, compared to the detail of the telescope, or if he could see what Neil saw, the canvas of colors that time and physics and the magic that imbued itself in the natural world had wrought.

After a while, the man settled onto his back, and Neil could hear his breathing, slow and measured. Neil traced the constellations with his eyes, reciting them in his head: Ursa Minor. Leo. Boötes, the Herdsmen. Ursa Major. He had never been able to see the Great Bear’s legs until he’d come here.

“I didn’t used to understand,” he said, connecting the dots of the constellation with his finger. “All those shapes the Ancients saw, they never really looked like anything to me. But out here, it’s kind of obvious, if you really look.”

The man hummed. “It’s easy to think people were idiots, or making shit up, when really it’s our own stupid lights that won’t let us see what made perfect sense to them.”

Neil looked at the man, the line of his profile under the silver light of night, the jut of his nose, the curve of his lips. He thought maybe he could see a mirror of it among the stars above. He thought about how we built our own darkness by drowning out the subtle light. He thought about the peace that could be found by letting starlight in. “I’m Neil, by the way.”

“Andrew.”

And Neil thought about how the names of the constellations survived, even though the namers were dust for millennia. How many people over the centuries had known those names, even as they pushed away the myths of their creation; how that knowledge could be traced along a billion tiny threads. And his eyes burned, even as he smiled.

* * *

“Come look at this.”

Two weeks had passed with rolling showers and cloudy nights. Neil had still driven the winding roads to the little clearing, just to catch glimpses of the stars through gaps in the clouds. Andrew had not come, and it had just been Neil and Fern and the background chorus that had somehow become inextricably linked to these long evenings in his mind. Neil had finally looked it up: the tiny singers were spring peepers, and how inch-long frogs could make such a racket Neil had no idea.

But the skies had cleared, as they always did eventually, and tonight Neil had watched the full moon rise. Andrew had appeared with it, the bag with his telescope slung over his shoulder, hair gleaming white in the silver light. Neil watched him as he set up, Fern doing her best to get underfoot, and wondered what he would look like under the sun.

And then:

“Come look at this.”

Andrew didn’t take his eyes off the telescope as Neil got to his feet and walked over. It felt—odd, bending to put his eye where Andrew’s had just been. Intimate, somehow. But then he saw what Andrew had been looking at and the awkwardness fell away. “What is that? It’s all...streaky.”

“It’s a comet.”

“But it’s green.”

Andrew made a quiet noise that might have been amused. “Observant.”

Neil watched it for a while. It reminded him of a comic strip: static, but with the tail showing movement, like rough-drawn lines after a running character. “Is this what you do? Look at comets?”

“Depends.”

Neil glanced at him, but he was looking up at the moon, hanging there like some giant flashlight in the sky. “On?”

“Whatever we decide on for the week.”

There was something so casual in the way Andrew said “we.” Something twisted in Neil’s gut; the reminder that Andrew had a whole life outside of this clearing, a life with people who mattered in a way Neil never would. He looked back through the eyepiece, but he could barely register what he was seeing. A cold nose found his hand, and his fingers made their way along Fern’s muzzle to her velvet ears.

He cleared his throat. “And this week it’s comets?”

“This week it’s _this_ comet. Bee read an article, so…”

Neil wanted to ask who Bee was, a friend or a girlfriend or someone else altogether. He reminded himself sternly that it was none of his business. He was nobody; this was nothing new. Surrendering the telescope, he headed back to his blanket.

He felt a vague sort of surprise when Andrew followed him. They lay down as they had the last time, a dog’s width of space between them, Fern happily occupying said space. The Milky Way was dimmed, the familiar streak of color faded into darkness by the moon. Only a handful of stars were scattered across the sky, diamonds on black velvet.

“Which constellation is that?” Andrew asked.

“Hmm?” Neil followed his hand, but he couldn’t quite tell where he was pointing. “Cancer? The one that looks like an upside down Y?”

“No, to the right of that, just above the trees. The one that looks like a dick.”

Neil snorted. “None of them look like a dick.”

There was a smile tucked in Andrew’s voice when he said, “They’re dots, Neil. You can make any of them look like a dick depending on how you connect them. But I mean the one with Castor and Pollux.”

“You know the names of the stars but not the constellation that’s, I don’t know, literally named after them?”

Andrew started to laugh, something quiet and secretive, and Neil joined in, louder and fuller, and Fern barked, loudest and most joyful of all. “I was never interested in the mythology of it,” Andrew admitted, when the three of them had quieted down. “I like the science. It feels more real, like it’s something I can prove.”

“But science changes all the time,” Neil argued, for the sake of arguing. “These constellations have been the same for thousands of years. People literally navigated the globe just by them. What’s more real than that?”

He didn’t know Andrew, not really; but there was a weight to the silence that fell that seemed heavier than the question had merited. And when Andrew murmured under his breath, “My own stupid light,” Neil didn’t think he was supposed to hear it.

* * *

Spring pulled towards summer like the tide towards the shore. Some nights found Neil sprawled on the ground in a t-shirt, relishing the nighttime breeze that played across his skin. Others still had him shivering in his jacket as he counted the stars.

Slowly, the sky above him changed. The Milky Way freed itself from the shackles of the trees; constellations moved; Gemini sank, until it was barely visible above the horizon.

And every Thursday, Andrew was there.

Andrew explained it one night. It was the new moon, and Andrew was barely visible, just hints of him glimmering ghost-like in the starlight. His hair, the bridge of his nose, a subtle gleam of eyes.

“It’s our arrangement,” Andrew said, having settled on the blanket next to Neil, this week’s nebula found. “My brother and Bee and me. We go at the same time and look at whatever we decided on.”

That mysterious Bee, who turned out not to be a girlfriend but Andrew’s adoptive mother. She had a fancy telescope, and when Andrew and his brother Aaron had moved in they had used it to look at all sorts of things, both legal and otherwise. Now they each had their own, for this express purpose.

Neil wondered what it was like to have that sort of link to people, where five hundred miles apart they were still together, if only in what they were looking at, if only for the span of a few breaths. He said as much.

Andrew didn’t blink; there was no shock or pity or awkwardness, none of that subtly judgmental bullshit that came from a lifetime of feeling secure in your place in the world. He just lay there, his eyes trained on Neil’s face, one hand playing with Fern’s paw while her tail thumped a quiet heartbeat on the blanket.

So Neil told him. Not everything; the night was too dark to invoke some of the monsters that lurked in Neil’s past. But some of it.

He talked about the terror that used to seize him at school, sitting in lecture halls, unable to hear what the professor was saying over the pounding of blood in his ears. The way he would run and run and run until he was nearly dropping from exhaustion, only to be unable to sleep; the way his grades slipped and slid down an unending precipice until he couldn’t bear to go to class at all. The way his friends would hover around him, the way the concern grew in their faces until it was all he could see.

The way it felt to pack up his stuff and leave. The way numbness stole over him as he stared at the emptiness of his side of the little dorm room; the finality of the click of the door as it closed.

Then Fern. He had resisted his therapist’s suggestion of an assistance dog but when he finally succumbed and went to meet the mass of wagging candidates she had picked him out of the group and he had just _known_.

“I would take her out, late at night, and while she was sniffing around I just started watching the stars. And it became this whole thing.” He gestured up at the sky, helpless to describe what it did to him. What it meant to be so small, and young, and insignificant; to have no impact on the gravity of the universe; to know that he would not shine on for people to gaze at for millennia after his death. To rage against his unimportance and rejoice in it at the same time.

Andrew’s eyes never left his face. And when Neil had finally talked himself out, and silence had fallen over the clearing, and even Fern was still and sleeping, Andrew reached out and touched his shoulder. Just a light brush of his fingers that sent goosebumps up Neil’s arms.

It wasn’t a lot. But it was enough.

* * *

One week, Andrew brought cookies. He held the little plastic box wordlessly in Neil’s direction, and he stared at it for a moment, at the perfectly imperfect cookies dotted liberally with chocolate chips, before taking one.

Fern sniffed the air hopefully as he nibbled at one edge, the rich buttery sweetness flooding his mouth. “Not for you,” he told her, and laughed as she whine-yawned and dropped into a down. “Piglet.”

“Wilbur was the piglet,” Andrew quipped, taking a cookie for himself and wisely securing the lid.

Neil grinned. “Maybe I should’ve named her Wilbur.”

“Naming her after the character who wants to save everyone seems fitting to me.”

Fern barked her agreement, or more likely her protest at her cookie-less state, and Neil laughed. “You’re not wrong.”

They retreated to their separate spots, Fern settling down with a choice stick midway between them. The chorus of chirping insects that had replaced the frogs for the nighttime musical selection filled the clearing.

Neil traced Cygnus with his eyes. “Do you ever wonder how the constellations got their name? Like, who first looked up at the thousands of stars and said, _this group, these ten stars, they look like a swan in flight_?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.

Andrew pulled away from his telescope, wandering over to Neil and dropping onto the blanket. He nudged Neil with his knee, and Neil obligingly pointed out the constellation in question. Andrew hummed as he studied it. “Do you think they knew it would be a permanent thing? Or do you think it was just like, some Greek farmer somewhere told his neighbor and here we are.”

“It’s a bit like pointing out that a cloud looks like a lion, only five thousand years later the cloud is still there and still looks like a lion.”

Andrew huffed the quiet little laugh Neil had come to seek. His knee hadn’t moved from its spot against Neil’s thigh, a little circle of warmth as the evening finally cooled. It had become more frequent: Andrew’s fingers against his back as he looked through the telescope at some distant nebula Andrew had found; legs brushing as they made up their own constellations (Neil’s favorite was Spongebob Squarepants, which was, in fact, Hercules); hands bumping against each other as they petted Fern where she lay between them.

He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe nothing, to Andrew; but somehow, Neil found himself looking for those few seconds of contact. It reminded him of waiting for the sun to set and the first little diamond gleam to appear among the darkness left behind. Eventually, Andrew shifted away, and Neil almost shivered in the evening chill.

“What’s on the menu for tonight?” he asked, as he always did. It had become a running joke, and he saw the corner of Andrew’s mouth twitch.

“Want to see?”

It was always a yes. Neil was coming to appreciate the telescope, much as he didn’t want to admit it. It was a different sort of awe, a different type of secret. He peered through the eyepiece.

A planet, not a star. Jupiter, easily recognizable even if it looked like one of those bouncy balls he had played with as a kid, white and rose stripes gracing the surface. It was so impossibly perfect that Neil felt his breath catch.

“This is the first day it’s been visible at night all year,” Andrew said, close to his ear. “Next week will be Saturn.”

“Thank you,” Neil murmured, turning so he was looking into Andrew’s eyes, gleaming in the starshine. They stared at each other, inches away; Neil could feel Andrew’s breath on his cheek, and he wondered what would happen if he leaned in.

“Andrew.” It was a whisper; he didn’t know what else it might have been. A plea or a confession, something tiny or something enormous, six letters, one name. He half-expected Andrew to shy away. But he didn’t. He cocked his head to the side and studied Neil, searching for something—

An odd sound had them pulling away from each other. Neil could just make out the outline of his dog, but not what she was doing. “Fern, leave it!”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, and there was something in her mouth. “Oh, fuck, the cookies,” he said, just as Andrew muttered, “Shit, that’s chocolate.”

“Drop it,” Neil ordered, and Fern complied. He breathed a sigh of relief and took a step towards her, realizing his mistake a fraction too late. Fern dropped into a playful crouch, grabbed the box of cookies, and ran.

The worst thing about dogs, Neil decided, not for the first time, is that they were too fucking fast. Fern’s version of a playful gambol had Neil running flat-out, and he wasn’t exactly slow for a biped. She darted and spun, the cookies rattling in their plastic shell as she dodged Neil and Andrew with ease.

After a few minutes of chasing, Andrew gave up and flopped onto the blanket, starfishing out dramatically. Fern trotted over to him and dropped the cookies on his chest, wagging.

“I hate you,” Andrew told her, even as one hand went up to rub her ear. Neil swooped in and grabbed the box, wiping it off surreptitiously on the corner of the blanket. Her game finished, Fern sprawled out in the dew-cooled grass, and Neil debated joining her.

He took his place next to Andrew instead. It was getting late; they usually spent a spare hour together before Neil went home and Andrew went wherever he went. But he couldn’t make himself leave. Not now.

Not when he felt like he was staring up at a sky full of stars he had never before seen or imagined. Not with the way the air seemed to crackle with electricity, like an impending storm despite the cloudless sky. He rolled on his side, only to find Andrew already watching him. “Hi,” he said idiotically.

Andrew reached up, stopping shy of touching Neil’s face. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, barely audible over the calls of the insects.

Neil nodded, and when Andrew didn’t move he somehow managed to unfreeze his voice. “Yeah. Yes. Yeah.”

And then Andrew’s hand was against his cheek, warm and rough; and his mouth was on Neil’s, strong and sure; and Neil didn’t know what to do with his hands or his tongue or really any other part of his body but he didn’t think he cared. Because Andrew knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t seem to mind Neil’s clumsiness.

It wasn’t that Neil had never kissed anyone before; it was that he had never been kissed like _that_ before. Kissing had always been a politely decorated room with no windows; this was the universe. He lost himself in the vastness of it, found himself kissing back with a fervor he never knew he possessed.

A cold nose pressed into the back of his neck; he twitched away from it, into Andrew, who wrapped a strong arm around him and tugged him even closer. Then a whine, and a paw at his shoulders. Andrew pulled away, and Neil let out an involuntary noise at the loss. But Fern immediately flopped down on top of him, covering his body with hers, nuzzling up under his chin.

He sighed, his hand going automatically to scratch at her neck. “She thinks I’m having a panic attack,” he said, and his voice was rough enough that he was grateful for the darkness that hid his blush.

“Are you?” Andrew asked.

Neil laughed. “Definitely not.”

But Andrew had already gotten to his feet. Neil followed. He wanted to reach out, but he settled for picking up the box of cookies and handing them back instead. “Do you think we can do that again sometime?”

Andrew hummed, cupped the back of Neil’s neck and drew him in.

* * *

The next week, Neil brought poundcake, the one thing he knew how to bake. He had forgotten to slice it, so they broke off chunks of it and nibbled while pointing out new constellations. Andrew renamed Draco “worm on a string” and Neil almost choked on his cake.

It turned out Saturn was a soft yellow, and the rings were really there, a perfect disk bisecting the planet. Neil stared at it until he was almost dizzy when he looked away. For some reason his eyes were burning. “It’s—I don’t know, I think I always imagined that the rings were like, exaggerated, or something,” he said, searching for words to explain the strange feeling that had swept over him.

Andrew chewed thoughtfully from his spot on the blanket, fending off Fern as she tried to mooch. “I know what you mean. I remember telling Bee I thought it had been artistic license.”

Neil settled down next to him. “What an odd sort of conspiracy that would be. Like, all the illustrators for books about space decided to make Saturn have rings for some obscure reason, and really it’s just some ordinary planet.”

“It could happen.”

They ended up tangled up together, Fern pressed against Neil’s back. There was just enough moon for Neil to see the way Andrew’s pupils were blown when they broke away. Neil found his way down to Andrew’s jaw, then his neck, noting the way Andrew’s hand tightened on his side as he lipped along his throat.

He liked this, he decided. Liked the way Andrew’s skin tasted of salt, liked the musky smell of him, liked the heat of his body and the sweetness of his mouth. He liked the way Andrew dragged his nose up Neil’s cheek, breathing him in.

“Hey,” he said, without really meaning to. “I like this.” Andrew blinked at him, and he felt his face flush. “I like you, I mean. Is that okay?”

Andrew’s hand found his hip, rocking him slightly back and forth, back and forth. “Yes,” he said eventually, against the tender skin under Neil’s ear. “That’s okay.”

* * *

The summer slipped past in a haze of heat and stars and Andrew. The Thursday nights in the clearing were a little universe unto themselves; it felt like stepping into a movie for a couple of hours before having to head back into the dour brightness of reality.

In between the telescope and the kissing and the naming of modern constellations, they talked. Neil learned about Andrew’s brother, studying medicine in Chicago while Andrew was getting his PhD in psychology at the university forty minutes south of where they sat now. He knew that they had changed foster homes like they changed their socks, sometimes together, sometimes not. “Were any of them good?” he asked, when the weight of Andrew’s silence got too heavy.

“No.” Andrew’s fingers traced patterns on Neil’s back. “Not until Bee.”

He learned that Andrew had a cat named Schrodinger, which he had found in a cardboard box next to a dumpster when it was only a month old and half-dead from fleas. “I brought him to class with me for a solid month so I could feed him. Now he’s a narcissistic little bastard.”

Neil laughed until Andrew shut him up with a kiss.

One week it rained for three days straight. Neil stayed home on Tuesday and Wednesday night, but Thursday found him making the familiar turns, his windshield wipers echoing his pounding heart. He knew Andrew wouldn’t be there; there was no point, when there was nothing to be seen, when the darkness was absolute. But he went anyway, and sat in the little dirt parking lot, listening to the rain pounding on the roof.

Just as he was about to give up and drive home, headlights flashed in his rear view mirror. He waited for them to pass on by the turnoff, but instead the car pulled in next to him. A moment later, his passenger door opened and Andrew slid into the car.

Neil just stared at him, all power of speech having departed. Raindrops were clinging to him—to his hair, his eyelashes, his upper lip. In the sudden brightness of the interior car lights, it was Andrew’s eyes that caught him. They weren’t the brown that Neil had always assumed, but a rich hazel, the color of fall honey flecked with green.

“You came,” he finally said.

“So did you.”

“Yeah, but…” _But I’m the one who’s broken,_ he wanted to say. _I’m the one with nothing else._

“Shut up,” Andrew said, and kissed him.

They kissed until Neil’s neck was sore, until his hip was protesting the console’s hard edge, until there was a hum running through his bloodstream. There was something different in the breaths passed between their lips, something as urgent and loud as the rain overhead. He tried to creep closer, only to practically fall over the gearshift.

He felt Andrew’s lips twitch into what he assumed was a smile. “You are aware there is a perfectly good backseat available, yes?”

“But it’s Fern’s.”

“I was referring to mine.”

Neil’s skin felt hot and prickly. He wasn’t sure why that felt so much more illicit than kissing under an open sky. Maybe it was all that was implied about being in the backseat with a guy you liked. Maybe it was the possibility of that being something that actually happened, not something nebulous or imagined.

Because it wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about it. He had. He had wondered—was wondering—what it would be like to have Andrew’s hands on his skin, what Andrew’s body would feel like under his fingertips. He had never cared before, never felt more than idle curiosity, but this was different. This was more and less real than anything he had ever known before, it was vital and impossible and—

“Neil. You don’t have to. We can stay right here. Or I can go.”

He blinked, and Andrew’s hand was on the back of his neck, and Fern was sitting up, her nose pressed to his cheek. “No I know,” he said, trying to clear his head. “It’s just, I want to.”

Neil thought that was explanation enough, but Andrew didn’t move. Neil’s hand found Andrew’s, and he laced their fingers together. “I’ve never wanted to before. Do more than kissing, I mean. But now I want to and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Andrew’s fingers started to play in the short hairs at the back of Neil’s neck. Fern settled back down in her seat with a quiet huff. Neil waited, but Andrew still didn’t say anything. “Unless you don’t want to, I don’t want to do anything you’re not interested in.”

Andrew tugged him forward then into a biting kiss. “You are a mess,” he murmured, and Neil hummed his agreement. “Come on.”

The sky had opened up; by the time they crossed the scant few feet to Andrew’s car their hair and shoulders were soaked through and Neil was laughing. Andrew slammed the door shut behind him and shook his head, spraying a fine mist everywhere and looking so much like Fern would in the same situation that Neil’s stomach hurt, and his only thought was, _this_.

He reached forward, cupping Andrew’s face in his hands, wiping the rain droplets off his cheeks with his thumbs. They stared at each other as the interior lights dimmed into nothingness, and then Andrew’s mouth was on his and Neil’s only thought was, _this_.

If he had had expectations, it would have been something fast and hard and clumsy, hands shoved into pants and teeth clashing, something too rough to allow a tenderness neither one of them had ever known. But Andrew shivered as he pushed Neil down, and his calloused hands were gentle as they explored, and his mouth was soft and warm on Neil’s skin, and his skin was cool and damp under Neil’s lips, and Neil shuddered underneath him and kissed him afterwards with a reverence he had never felt even when staring at the sky, and his only thought was, _this_.

* * *

The jingle of Fern’s collar woke Neil. He grumbled into his pillow when she rested her chin on the bed expectantly, then sighed and pushed the covers aside. As silently as he could, he pulled on his socks and shrugged into the hoodie that he’d discarded the night before.

Andrew’s eyes opened as Neil tiptoed past, Fern taking no such precautions. The pale winter light turned him golden against the white sheets, and Neil paused to drop a kiss to his temple before following his impatient dog down the hallway. Schrodinger sat in the gloom of the darkened kitchen, an oversized mound of brown and black stripes, eyes gleaming as he watched them pass. After Andrew’s story, Neil had been expecting a half-grown kitten and had been taken aback when he first saw a creature little smaller than a bobcat. Schrodinger hadn’t thought much of Neil and Fern then, and remained unimpressed even though Neil tried to bribe him with snacks every chance he got.

Fern wisely gave the cat a wide berth and grabbed her leash where it lay by the door. She sat with ill-concealed impatience while Neil pulled on his jacket and tied his shoes, and practically burst out the door when it opened.

Their breath turned to twin plumes of white smoke as they walked, winding their way through the streets towards the looming campus. He had memorized the way to the building that housed the Math department weeks ago, and Fern led him there, waiting patiently while he stared up at its brick face.

Next week, they would be inside. Two classes, eight credits, leaving him just twelve shy of the degree he thought he would never get.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Fern leaned against his leg, and he rubbed a hand over her head. “We’ve got this,” he said aloud, and her tail thumped against the sidewalk.

The bricks and concrete were unimpressed, but he didn’t care.

They took a different way back, stopping at the little cafe to snag coffee and croissants from the barista who always gave Fern a biscotti. And then up the tiny street to the tiny house with its tiny yard and the tiny Christmas tree that still shone in the window.

And Andrew. Most importantly Andrew.

He was in the living room when they came in, creased and rumpled from sleep. Neil dropped his mocha in front of him with a brush of lips on hair, then went into the kitchen where the animals were already milling. He only tripped over Schrodinger twice while spooning his food into his dish, a record low, then gathered up a banana and a couple glasses of juice to the soundtrack of high-speed eating.

Andrew glanced up over the edge of his book when Neil settled next to him on the couch. He shimmered in the sunlight that filtered through the window; as much as they both loved the stars, Andrew was made for the sun. And Neil was coming to love that too.

Breakfast complete and bowl polished clean, Fern took her place next to him; Schrodinger was off doing his cat business only he knew where. The day stretched out before them. A Thursday, and the forecast was clear, and Orion would spend the night hunting his prey across the sky. In twelve hours they would be in the car, heading north into the glorious darkness. Neil settled deeper into his seat and let the rare peace swirl around him, as sparkling and beautiful and ethereal as dust motes in the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely loved writing this, and I hope that you all will find it a little oasis of hope. 
> 
> I've talked before about my anxiety replying to comments, but please know that I love and cherish every comment I get, and re-read them to give myself inspiration, so I would love to know what you think! And you can hmu [on Tumblr](https://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com) any time!


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